E. 

221 
B4 


UC-NRLF 


SB    HD3    213 


I) 


QQ 


THE  OTHER  SIDE 

OF 

The  Declaration  of  Independence 


A  LECTURE  BY  FRANK  BERGEN, 

AT  WESTMINSTER  CHAPEL,  ELIZABETH,  N.  J. 

DECEMBER  16TH,  1897. 


'AuM  Ali*ram  -partem. 


'fH  cDITION; 


BAKER  PRINTING  Co. 
251  MARKET  ST., 
NEWARK,  N.  J. 


COPYRIGHT    1898 
3Y    FRANK    BERGEN. 


THE  OTHER  SIDE  OF  THE 
DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE 

Ladies  and  Gentlemen: 

ONE  day  last  September,  in  a  laugh 
ing  talk  with  my  friend,  Mr.  At 
kinson,*  I  expressed  the  opinion 
that  the  Declaration  of  Independence  was  an 
unjustifiable  and  an  ungrateful  act.  I  made 
the  remark  in  order  to  hear  my  friend  dis 
course  patriotic  eloquence,  and  you  may  be 
sure  that  he  did.  We  discussed  the  matter 
for  some  time  without  coming  to  an  agree 
ment — perhaps  we  did  not  intend  to  agree 
when  we  began  to  dispute.  Our  talk  ended 
with  an  invitation,  extended  rather  in  the  form 
of  a  challenge,  to  make  my  remark  the  text  of 
a  discourse  for  the  benefit  of  the  coal  fund; 
and  so  it  came  to  pass  that  I  am  here  this 
evening  to  stand  in  the  pillory  for  a  half  hour 
or  so  as  a  punishment  for  trying  to  have  a 
little  fun  with  a  minister. 

*Rev.  J.  R.  Atkinson,  Rector  of  Trinity  Church,  Elizabeth. 

28281 '?. 


4  THE  OTHER  SIDE  OF  THE 

Some  time  ago,  to  gratify  a  curious  or  per 
verse  impulse,  I  made  some  inquiry  to  learn 
whether  there  were  two  sides  to  the  controversy 
that  led  to  our  Revolutionary  War,  and,  if  so, 
to  find  out  how  much  of  the  blizzard  of  eulogy 
and  oratory,  which  we  accept  as  history,  is 
veritable  fact.  I  found  two  sides  to  the  dis 
pute,  as  you  probably  know,  but  have  not  yet 
finished  the  rest  of  my  task. 

Let  me  say  a  word  to  guard  against  mis 
understanding.  I  do  not  think  an  accurate 
estimate  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence 
can  be  made  without  a  minute  and  critical 
survey  of  the  course  of  civilization  in  Europe 
and  America  from  the  break-up  of  the  Dark 
Ages  to  the  outbreak  of  the  French  Revolution. 
To  form  an  opinion  of  the  document,  or  of  the 
men  who  signed  it,  from  a  mere  reading  of  its 
text  and  an  account  of  the  skirmishes  from 
Lexington  to  Yorktown,  would  be  quite  absurd, 
and  yet  such  an  opinion  has  been  formed  many 
times  on  that  meagre  stock  of  information.  All 
I  shall  undertake  to  do  is  to  remind  you  of  a 
few  facts  on  one  side  of  a  long  controversy — 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.  5 
a  controversy  in  which  neither  side  had  a  mo 
nopoly  of  righteousness. 

No  doubt  the  Declaration  of  Independence 
is  regarded  as  one  of  the  beacon  lights  shining 
in  the  course  of  the  long  and  painful  march  of 
the  Anglo-Saxon  race  from  the  feudal  system 
to  rational  liberty,  fit  to  be  held  up  with  Magna 
Charta,  the  Petition  of  Right,  the  Bill  of  Rights 
and  the  Federal  Constitution.  But  whatever 
may  be  the  final  judgment  of  history  on  the 
Declaration — if  history  ever  renders  any  final 
judgment — there  can  be  no  harm  in  turning 
the  famous  old  document  over  for  a  moment 
and  looking  at  the  other  side.  If  there  is 
reason  to  suspect  that  some  of  the  statements 
in  the  Declaration  of  Independence  are  ex 
aggerated,  unsound  or  untrue,  or  that  some  of 
the  reasons  alleged  to  justify  it  are  fallacies, 
let  us  try  to  forget  our  dislike  of  England  for 
a  little  while  and  ask  the  Fourth  of  July  orators 
to  be  still  long  enough  for  us  to  find  out  what 
was  the  real  trouble  between  George  Washing 
ton  and  George  III. 

I   am   convinced  that   such   an   investigation 


6  THE  OTHER  SIDE  OF  THE 

would  be  wholesome  and  cheerful,  and  an  act 
of  justice  to  the  present  generation.  Our  na 
tive  historians  and  the  common  run  of  Fourth 
of  July  orators  have  treated  our  countrymen 
badly  for  a  hundred  years.  They  have  given 
the  world  to  understand  that  we  are  the  de 
generate  children  of  a  race  of  giants,  statesmen 
and  moralists  who  flourished  for  a  few  years 
about  a  century  ago  and  passed  away.  The 
truth,  I  think,  is  different.  An  impartial  ex 
amination  of  the  records  would  probably  show 
that  we  are  wiser,  better,  more  benevolent  than 
the  standard  heroes  of  1  776,  and  quite  as  pa 
triotic  and  brave.  Anyone  familiar  with  a  horn 
book  of  natural  or  political  history  should  sus 
pect  this  to  be  so.  If  we  know  anything  cer 
tainly  it  is  that  the  conflict  going  on  around  us 
between  what  we  call  the  forces  of  good  and 
evil  is  a  process  of  perpetual  improvement  in 
obedience  to  some  immutable  and  higher  law 
that  we  laymen  do  not  clearly  understand.  On 
this  point  the  most  profound  historians  and 
those  deepest  in  science  seem  to  agree.  Mr. 
Spencer,  who  has  taken  all  knowledge  for  his 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.  7 
province,  and  has  succeeded  better  than  Bacon, 
tells  us  that  "progress  is  not  an  accident,  but 
a  necessity.  Instead  of  civilization  being  arti 
ficial  it  is  a  part  of  nature;  all  of  a  piece  with 
the  development  of  an  embryo  or  the  unfold 
ing  of  a  flower."  And  the  late  Professor 
Huxley,  whose  profound  learning  seemed  to 
strengthen  his  good  sense,  after  giving  us  a 
dismal  picture  of  man  emerging  from  the  dark 
ness  of  prehistoric  ages  with  the  marks  of  his 
lowly  origin  strong  upon  him, — a  mere  brute, 
he  says,  more  intelligent  than  other  brutes, — 
rejoices  that  enormous  changes  for  the  better 
have  occurred  and  are  still  going  on  in  the 
world,  and  adds  that  if  this  were  not  so  he 
would  hail  the  coming  of  a  kindly  comet  to 
sweep  the  whole  affair  away  as  a  public  bless 
ing.  And  so  Macaulay,  grown  gray  over 
history,  displays  the  same  truth  by  one  of  his 
flashes  of  rhetoric.  He  tells  us  that  "those 
who  compare  the  age  on  which  their  lot  has 
fallen  with  a  golden  age  that  exists  only  in 
their  imagination  may  talk  of  degeneracy  and 
decay,  but  no  man  who  is  correctly  informed 


8  THE  OTHER  SIDE  OF  THE 

as   to   the   past,    will   be   disposed   to    take   a 

morose  or  desponding  view  of  the  present." 

I  have  hastily  summoned  these  eminent  wit 
nesses,  and  examined  them  briefly,  in  order 
to  show  that  the  presumption  is  against  the 
accuracy  of  the  history  of  our  revolutionary 
.  era  as  commonly  written.  We  may  give  our 
ancestors  credit  for  many  admirable  virtues 
without  attempting  to  maintain  that  a  multitude 
of  unlettered  colonists,  scattered  along  the  At 
lantic  coast — hunting,  fishing,  smuggling  and 
tilling  the  soil  for  a  living,  and  fighting  Indians 
and  wild  beasts — possessed  a  vast  fund  of  po 
litical  virtue  and  political  intelligence,  and  car 
ried  off  the  bulk  of  it  with  them  when  they 
passed  away. 

We  may  not  agree  with  the  remark  of  the 
late  Wendell  Phillips  that  history  for  the  most 
part  is  a  series  of  lies  agreed  on;jior  refuse  to 
hear  history  read  as  Walpole  refused,  because 
he  said  history  must  be  false;  but  it  must  be 
conceded  as  probably  true  that  much  of  our 
history  of  the  revolutionary  era  is  fiction  written 
in  gush.  If  I  should  read  to  you  the  account 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.  9 
of  the  battle  of  Lexington,  or  of  the  street 
fight  we  call  the  Boston  Massacre,  as  written 
by  Bancroft,  and  then  read  Lecky's  story  of 
the  same  incidents,  it  would  make  you  laugh. 
Yet  both  of  these  historians  were  learned  and 
honest  men;  but  they  saw  facts,  or  at  least  one 
of  them  did,  not  with  eyes,  but  with  preju 
dices,  and  kindred  writers  have  been  feeding 
our  patriotism  on  fiction  and  prejudice  for  more 
than  a  century. 

The  public  gorge  is  beginning  to  rise  at  this 
tirade  of  indiscriminate  eulogy,  and  the  public 
taste  is  beginning  to  reject  it  as  a  form  of  def 
amation.  Sixty  years  ago  Emerson,  suffocated 
by  the  fumes  of  sulphur  that  Jonathan  Edwards 
had  blown  over  New  England,  demanded  a 
religion  of  insight,  not  of  tradition  merely. 
And  so  the  ripening  judgment  of  our  people 
is  beginning  to  demand  portraits  of  our  an 
cestors  painted  according  to  the  command  that 
Cromwell  gave  the  artist — to  paint  his  fea 
tures,  warts,  blotches  and  all — and  to  demand 
an  account  of  the  exploits  of  our  forefathers 
written  as  Othello  desired  his  memory  to  be 


10  THE  OTHER  SIDE  OF  THE 
preserved.  When  we  shall  learn  to  speak  of 
them  as  they  were — to  extenuate  nothing,  nor 
set  down  aught  in  malice — their  worthy  shades 
will  bow  and  thank  us,  for  no  sturdy  character 
in  history  ever  craved  or  relished  gush. 

In  a  short  essay  on  the  features  of  American 
public  life  in  the  revolutionary  era,  Professor 
Sumner  of  Yale  observed  that  "  no  one  appears 
to  have  examined  critically  the  opinions,  pre 
tensions  and  methods  of  the  American  colonists 
in  the  pre-revolutionary  period  to  see  how  far 
they  were  right."  ^The  English,  he  reminds  us, 
never  very  seriously  debated  the  doctrines  put 
forward  by  the  Americans  before  the  war. 
Indeed,  the  great  orators  of  England — 
Chatham,  Burke,  Fox,  Conway,  Camden  and 
Col.  Barre — in  their  zeal  to  break  down  ob 
noxious  ministries,  justified  the  conduct  of  the 
Americans,  although  asserting  the  omnipotent 
power  of  Parliament  to  legislate  for  the  colonies 
on  all  subjects.  But  still  with  this  strong  force 
of  orators  and  debaters  pleading  their  cause  the 
patriots  complained  that  they  were  not  repre 
sented  in  Parliament. 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.  1 1 
Bancroft  was  our  standard  historian  for 
many  years.  He  was  very  industrious,  but 
his  mind  was  narrow,  and  not  very  strong. 
He  had  a  knack  or  trick  of  fine  writing.  His 
brain  was  highly  charged  with  patriotic  ardor, 
which  seemed  to  carry  him  off  his  feet  now 
and  then;  and  so,  much  of  his  book  came  to 
be  written  in  a  style  that  resembles  a  prose 
translation  of  Homer.  His  book,  so  tar  as 
it  relates  to  the  revolutionary  era,  is  useful 
as  a  magazine  of  patriotic  oratory;  but  the 
sober  and  critical  searcher  after  frozen  truth 
must  go  elsewhere.  Hildreth  told  the  truth 
faithfully,  but  his  style  is  dull  and  his  work  a 
mere  outline.  The  reception  of  his  book  dis 
pleased  many  good  people  who  knew  nothing 
about  the  Revolution,  except  what  they  had 
learned  from  Bancroft  and  the  orators,  and 
led  him  to  defend  himself  in  a  somewhat  lumi 
nous  remark  in  the  preface  to  his  second  edi 
tion: 

"The  undress  portraits  I  have  presented  of 
our  colonial  progenitors,  though  made  up 
chiefly  of  traits  delineated  by  themselves;  my 


12  THE  OTHER  SIDE  OF  THE 
presumption  in  bursting  the  thin,  shining  bubble 
so  assiduously  blown  up  by  so  many  windy 
mouths  of  a  colonial  golden  age  of  fabulous 
purity  and  virtue,  have  given  very  serious  of 
fense,  especially  in  New  England,  region  of 
set  formality  and  hereditary  grimace,  where  a 
careful  editorial  toning  down,  to  prepare  them 
for  being  printed,  of  the  letters  of  even  so 
cautious  a  person  as  Washington,  has  been 
thought  to  be  demanded  alike  by  decorum  to 
ward  him,  and  by  propriety  toward  the  public." 
McMaster  has  collected  a  great  deal  of 
information  about  the  habits  of  our  ancestors, 
largely  from  the  yellow  journals  of  their  day, 
but  he  has  shown  no  capacity  to  use  it  so  as 
to  instruct.  Indeed,  his  childish  effort  to  imi 
tate  Macaulay  makes  his  work  ridiculous  and 
insincere.  It  reminds  one  of  the  effort  of  the 
feeble  Richelieu  to  wield  the  sword  of  Charles 
Martel.  But  there  is  a  more  serious  charge  to 
be  brought  against  McMaster.  Noting  the 
rising  disgust  with  the  fulsome  praise  of  the 
patriots  and  all  their  works,  and  pandering  to 
indiscriminating  irreverence,  he  turned  the  bat- 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.  13 
teries  of  his  flippant  rhetoric  against  the  most 
worthy  of  all.  He  filled  a  page  of  his  book 
with  a  jocular  account  of  the  last  illness  and 
death  of  Washington,  and  added  a  disgraceful 
paragraph  purporting  to  depict  the  great  Vir 
ginian  in  his  habit  as  he  lived.  It  was  a  vul 
gar  effort  to  dissolve  the  purple  cloud  of  rhet 
oric  in  which  Everett  had  carried  Washington 
through  thirty  states. 

The  Narrative  and  Critical  History,  edited 
by  Winsor,  is  a  huge  mass  of  raw  material, 
and  the  other  so-called  standard  histories  of 
our  country  treat  of  epochs  merely,  or  were 
written  to  amuse  children  in  school.  The 
public  mind  filled  with  such  writings  is  not 
likely  to  possess  a  very  clear  impression  of 
important  facts.  Let  us  turn  to  other  sources 
of  information  and  get  a  few  lights  of  another 
color  to  set  about  the  Declaration  of  Inde 
pendence,  and  then  read  it  over  again. 

>The   earlier   half   of   the   eighteenth   century  ' 

was  filled  with  unheroic  war.  France,  England 
and  Spain  were  beginning  to  overrun  the  in 
terior  of  North  America,  quarreling  and  fight- 


14         THE  OTHER  SIDE  OF  THE 

ing  as  they  went.  Spain  claimed  a  zone  to 
the  south,  and  France  a  vast  territory  to  the 
north  and  west  of  the  English  colonies.  Each 
of  the  three  countries  sought  aid  from  the  sav 
ages  to  carry  on  their  enterprises  and  depreda 
tions,  but  their  petty  wars  were  indecisive. 
While  the  English  colonies  were  beset  on  the 
north  by  the  French,  on  the  south  by  the  Span 
iards,  and  on  the  west  by  the  Indians  skulking 
along  the  Alleghany  ranges,  and  were  com 
pelled  to  depend  on  the  wooden  walls  of 
England  for  protection  of  their  coasts,  .they 

yrgrg  |-fjnarkfll4y  Inyal   tp  frfa  rrQWfl  pf  pn gl and . 

Their  representative  assemblies  passed  obse 
quious  resolutions  expressing  loyalty  and  grat 
itude  to  the  King,  and  the  people  erected  his 
statue  in  public  places.  Indeed,  this  feeling 
of  loyalty  existed  in  the  minds  of  a  large  ma 
jority  of  the  people  down  to  the  battle  of 
Bunker  Hill,  and  was  never  wholly  eradicated, 
the  summer  of  1 774  Franklin  assured 
Chatham  that  there  was  no  desire  among  the 
colonists  for  independence.  He  said.  "  Hav 
ing  more  than  once  traveled  almost  from  one 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.  15 
end  of  the  continent  to  the  other  and  kept 
a  great  variety  of  company — eating,  drinking 
and  conversing  with  them  freely,  I  have  never 
heard  in  any  conversation  from  any  person, 
drunk  or  sober,  the  least  expression  of  a  wish 
for  a  separation  or  hint  that  such  a  thing  would 
be  advantageous  to  America."  Nearly  a  year 
later,  in  March,  1 775,  John  Adams  wrote: 
"  That  there  are  any  that  pant  after  indepen 
dence  is  the  greatest  slander  on  the  Province." 
Jefferson  himself  declared  that  until  shortly 
before  the  Declaration  of  Independence  he 
had  never  heard  a  whisper  of  disposition  to 
separate  from  Great  Britain;  and  Washing 
ton,  in  October,  1  774,  denied  in  the  strongest 
terms  that  there  was  any  wish  for  independence 
in  any  province  in  America.  This  feeling 
must  have  arisen  from  gratitude  for  the  pro 
tection  afforded  by  the  mother  country,  or  at 
least  satisfaction  with  the  relations  existing. 

On  this  point  there  is  a  striking  answer 
made  by  Franklin  in  his  crafty  examination 
before  the  House  of  Commons  in  February, 
\  766.  In  reply  to  the  question,  "  What  was 


16  THE  OTHER  SIDE  OF  THE 
the  temper  of  America  towards  Great  Britain 
before  the  year  1763?"  he  said,  "The  best 
in  the  world.  They  submitted  willingly  to  the 
government  of  the  Crown  and  paid,  in  their 
courts,  obedience  to  the  acts  of  Parliament. 
Numerous  as  the  people  are  in  the  several  old 
provinces,  they  cost  you  nothing  in  forts,  cita 
dels,  garrisons,  or  armies  to  keep  them  in  sub 
jection.  They  were  governed  by  this  country 
at  the  expense  only  of  a  little  pen,  ink  and 
paper;  they  were  led  by  a  thread. 
not  only  a  ^rf>spprt(  huf  arj  afff»r.tinnt_ff> 
Blilainj  fQr~Jts_]^ii[Sj_jts__custpms  and  man- 
ners,  and, .gven  a  fondness  fpr  its  fashions,  th at 
greatly  increased  the  commerce.  Natives  of 
Britain  were  always  treated  with  particular 
regard;  to  be  an  Old  England  man  was,  of 
itself,  a  character  of  some  respect,  and  gave 
a  kind  of  rank  among  us."  And  in  reply  to 
the  question,  "  What  is  their  temper  now?" 
he  said,  "  Verj;.jxmcJbualtfrpd."  It  is  inter 
esting  to  inquire  what  happened  during  the 
three  years  intervening  to  change  the  temper 
of  the  colonists. 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.  1  7 
Ih  1  756  the  elder  Pitt,  Prime  Minister  of 
England,  an  empire  builder  of  immense  energy, 
conceived  the  idea  of  organizing  a  campaign 
to  put  an  end  once  for  all  to  the  enemies  of 
the  English  colonies  in  America.  War  was 
declared  against  the  French;  an  army  and  a 
fleet  were  sent  from  England;  money  was 
pledged  to  the  colonies  to  aid  in  equipping 
militia,  and  a  war  of  seven  years  was  waged, 
ending  in  the  complete  conquest  and  cession 
of  Canada.  The  power  of  the  Indians,  who 
had  assisted  the  French,  was  weakened,  and 
in  order  to  remove  other  enemies  of  the  English 
colonists  Pitt  gave  Cuba  to  Spain  in  exchange 
for  Florida,  so  that  in  1  763  the  British  flag 
waved  from  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  to  the  frozen 
North.  The  coast  of  the  Atlantic  was  pro 
tected  by  the  British  navy,  and  the  colonists 
had  no  longer  any  enemies  to  fear,  except  the 
retreating  Indians. 

For  this  relief  the  colonists  gave  much 
thanks  to  the  King  and  Parliament.  The  site 
of  Fort  Duquesne  was  named  Pittsburgh  in 
honor  of  the  Prime  Minister.  Massachusetts 


18  THE  OTHER  SIDE  OF  THE 
voted  a  costly  monument  in  Westminster  Ab 
bey  in  memory  of  Lord  Howe,  who  had  fallen 
in  the  campaign  against  Canada.  The  assem 
bly  of  the  same  colony  in  a  joyous  address  to 
the  Governor,  declared  that  without  the  as 
sistance  of  the  parent  state  the  colonies  must 
have  fallen  a  prey  to  the  power  of  France, 
and  that  without  the  money  sent  from  England 
the  burden  of  the  war  would  have  been  too 
great  to  bear.  In  an  address  to  the  King  they 
made  the  same  acknowledgments,  and  pledged 
themselves  to  demonstrate  their  gratitude  by 
every  possible  testimony  of  duty  and  loyalty. 
James  Otis  expressed  the  common  sentiment  of 
the  hour  when,  upon  being  chosen  moderator 
of  the  first  town  meeting  held  in  Boston  after 
the  peace,  he  declared:  "  We  in  America 
have  certainly  abundant  reasons  to  rejoice. 
Not  only  are  the  heathen  driven  out,  but  the 
Canadians,  much  more  formidable  enemies, 
are  conquered  and  become  fellow  subjects. 
The  British  dominion  and  power  can  now  be 
said  literally  to  extend  from  sea  to  sea  and 
from  the  Great  River  to  the  ends  of  the  earth." 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.    19 

And  after  praising  the  wise  administration  of 
His  Majesty,  and  lauding  the  British  con 
stitution  to  the  skies,  he  went  on  to  say: 
4 'Those  jealousies  which  some  weak  and  wicked 
minds  have  endeavored  to  infuse  with  regard 
to  these  colonies  had  their  birth  in  the  black 
ness  of  darkness;  and  it  is  a  great  pity  that 
they  had  not  remained  there  forever.  The 
true  interests  of  Great  Britain  and  her  plan 
tations  are  mutual;  and  what  God  in  his 
providence  has  united  let  no  man  dare  attempt 
to  pull  asunder." 

This  French  and  Indian  war,  as  it  was  com 
monly  called,  carried  on  with  so  much  energy  and 
success,  doubled  the  national  debt  of  England, 
and  made  taxation  oppressive  in  that  country. 
The  war  had  been  waged  mainly  for  the  ben 
efit  of  the  cojonists,  and,  as  it  was  necessary 
to  maintain  a  standing  army  to  protect  the  con 
quered  territory,  it  was  considered  but  reason 
able  that  part  of  the  expense  should  be  borne 
by  the  Americans.  This  was  especially  so  in 
view  of  the  fact  that  the  conquest  of  Canada 
had  been  a  prime  object  of  statesmen  and 


20         THE  OTHER  SIDE  OF  THE 

leading  citizens  of  the  colonies  for  many  years. 
It  has  been  said  on  good  authority  that 
Franklin  brought  about  the  expedition  against 
Canada  that  ended  with  Wolfe's  victory  on  the 
Plains  of  Abraham.  In  all  companies  and  on 
all  occasions  he  had  urged  the  conquest  of 
Canada  as  an  object  of  the  utmost  importance. 
He  said  it  would  inflict  a  blow  upon  the  French 
power  in  America  from  which  it  would  never 
recover,  and  would  have  a  lasting  influence 
in  advancing  the  prosperity  of  the  British  col 
onies.  Our  historians  are  just  beginning  to  dis 
cover  and  tell  us  that  Franklin  was  one  of 
the  shrewdest  statesmen  of  the  age  in  which 
he  lived.  For  a  century  we  were  taught  to 
think  of  him  as  a  vagrant  and  industrious 
youth  who  was  born  somewhere  in  Boston, 
emigrated  to  Philadelphia,  carried  on  a  job- 
printing  business  there  for  many  years,  scat 
tered  some  good  sense  over  the  country  by 
means  of  an  almanac,  established  a  circulating 
library,  made  some  crude  experiments  with 
electricity,  organized  a  fire  company,  and  in 
vented  a  stove.  But  this  is  a  low  estimate  of 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.  21 
his  abilities.  Probably  Franklin  did  as  much 
as  any  man  who  ever  lived  to  make  life  worth 
living;  but  his  greatest  achievements  were  in 
the  domain  of  statecraft.  After  egging  Eng 
land  on  to  capture  Canada  from  the  French, 
and  thus  removing  the  most  dreaded  enemy  of 
the  colonies,  he  won  the  confidence  of  the  court 
and  people  of  France  and  obtained  their  aid 
to  deprive  England  of  the  best  part  of  a  con 
tinent.  He  was  genial,  thrifty  and  adroit,  and 
his  jocose  wisdom  was  never  more  tersely  ex 
pressed  than  when  he  advised  the  signers  of 
the  Declaration  of  Independence  to  hang  to 
gether  or  they  would  hang  separately. 

At  the  conclusion  of  the  Peace  of  Paris,  in 
1  763,  Great  Britain  had  ceased  to  be  an  in 
sular  kingdom,  and  had  become  a  world-wide 
empire,  consisting  of  three  grand  divisions: 
(1)  The  British  Islands,  (2)  India,  and  (3) 
a  large  part  of  North  America.  In  Ireland 
an  army  of  ten  or  twelve  thousand  men  was 
maintained  by  Irish  resources,  voted  by  the 
Irish  Parliament  and  available  for  the  general 
defense  of  the  Empire.  In  India  a  similar  army 


22  THE  OTHER  SIDE  OF  THE 
was  maintained  under  the  despotic  government 
that  existed  there.  English  statesmen  believed 
that  each  of  these  great  parts  of  the  Empire 
should  contribute  to  the  defense  of  the  whole, 
and  unless  they  should  do  so  voluntarily  it 
was  their  opinion,  to  which  the  great  lawyers 
of  England  agreed,  that  power  to  force  con 
tribution  resided  in  the  Imperial  Parliament  at 
Westminster  and  should  be  exercised.  It  was 
thought  that  an  army  of  ten  thousand  men  was 
necessary  to  protect  the  territory  won  from 
France  and  to  keep  the  Indians  in  subjection, 
especially  as  it  was  believed  that  the  French 
would  endeavor  to  recapture  Canada  at  the 

\.  first  opportunity.  America,  it  should  be  re 
membered,  paid  no  part  of  the  interest  on  the 
national  debt  of  England,  amounting  to  one 
hundred  and  forty  million  pounds/  one-half 

_  of  which  had  been  contracted  in  the  French 
and  Indian  war.  America  paid  nothing  to 
support  the  navy  that  protected  its  coast,  al 
though  it  was  the  most  prosperous  and  lightly 
taxed  portion  of  the  British  Empire.  Gren- 
ville,  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer,  asked  the 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.  23 
Americans  to  contribute  one  hundred  thousand 
pounds  a  year,  about  one-third  of  the  expense 
of  maintaining  the  proposed  army,  and  about 
one-third  of  one  per  cent,  of  the  sum  we  pay 
each  year  for  pensions.  He  promised  dis 
tinctly  that  the  army  should  never  be  required 
to  serve  except  in  America  and  the  West  In 
dia  Islands;  but  te  could  not  persuade  the 
colonist^  to  agree  on  a  practical  plan  for  rais 
ing  the  money  among  themselves,  and  so  pro 
pose^],  tct.. resort  to  taxation  by  act  of  Parlia 
ment.  At  the  same  time  he  made  this  pro 
posal  he  assured  the  Americans  that  the  pro 
ceeds  of  the  tax  should  be  expended  solely 
in  America,  and  that  if  they  would  raise  the 
money  among  themselves,  in  their  own  way, 
he  would  be  satisfied.  He  gave  them  a  year 
to  consider  the  proposition.  At  the  end  of 
the  year  they  were  as  reluctant  as  ever  to  tax 
themselves  for  their  own  defense  or  submit  to 
taxation  by  act  cf  Parliament.  Then  the 
Stamp  Act  was  passed — it  was  designed  to 
raise  one  hundred  thousand  pounds  a  year — 
and  the  war  of  words  assumed  an  acute  con 
dition. 


24         THE  OTHER  SIDE  OF  THE 

The  heart  of  the  Old  Dominion  was  fired  by 
Patrick  Henry,  one  of  the  most  unrestrained 
mortals  who  ever  walked  the  earth.  Byron 
called  him  a  forest-born  Demosthenes,  and 
Jefferson,  wondering  over  his  career,  exclaimed: 
'*  Where  he  got  that  torrent  of  language  is 
inconceivable.  I  have  frequently  closed  my 
eyes  while  he  spoke,  and  when  he  was  done 
asked  myself  what  he  had  said  without  being 
able  to  recollect  a  word  of  it."  Henry  failed 
in  business  repeatedly  while  still  a  stripling, 
became  hopelessly  bankrupt  at  twenty-three, 
and  probably  was  not  asked  to  pay  taxes. 
Then  he  studied  law  a  few  weeks,  practiced 
a  few  years,  and  finally  embarked  on  the  stormy 
sea  of  politics.  One  day  he  worked  himself 
into  a  fine  frenzy,  and  in  a  most  dramatic 
manner  demanded  liberty  or  death,  although 
he  had  both  freely  at  his  disposal.  The  first 
entry  Fame  ever  made  of  his  exploits  is  an  ac 
count  of  his  success  in  an  effort  to  persuade 
a  jury  to  render  one  of  the  most  unjust  verdicts 
ever  recorded  in  court.  He  was  a  slave-holder 
nearly  all  his  life.  He  bequeathed  slaves  and 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.  25 
cattle  in  his  will,  and  one  of  his  eulogists  brags 
that  he  could  buy  or  sell  a  horse  or  a  negro 
as  well  as  anybody. 

James  Otis  started  the  Revolution  in  New 
England  by  what  Lecky  calls  "  an  incendiary 
speech "  against  writs  of  assistance.  These 
writs  were  intended  to  authorize  custom-house 
officers  to  search  for  smuggled  goods,  and  if 
half  what  Hildreth  states  and  Bancroft  admits 
in  regard  to  smuggling  along  the  coast  of  New 
England  is  true,  there  is  no  reason  to  wonder 
why  such  writs  were  unpopular  in  Boston.  Otis 
was  no  doubt  an  eloquent  man,  and  all  the 
more  dangerous  because  he  sometimes  thought 
he  was  right;  but  it  is  always  prudent  to  dis 
trust  the  eloquence  of  a  criminal  lawyer.  We 
need  no  further  proof  of  this  than  the  advice 
Otis  gave  the  people  on  the  passage  of  the 
Stamp  Act:  "  It  is  the  duty,"  he  said,  "  of 
all  humbly  and  silently  to  acquiesce  in  all  the 
decisions  of  the  supreme  legislature.  Nine 
hundred  and  ninety-nine  in  a  thousand  of  the 
colonists  will  never  once  entertain  a  thought 
but  of  submission  to  our  Sovereign,  and  to  the 


26         THE  OTHER  SIDE  OF  THE 
authority  of  Parliament  in  all  possible  contin 
gencies.     They  undoubtedly  have  the  right  to 
levy  internal  taxes  on  the  colonists." 

At  the  time  the  Stamp  Act  was  passed 
Hutchinson  was  Lieutenant  Governor  and 
Chief  Justice  of  Massachusetts.  He  was  a  ..  >  * 

C> 

man  of  rare  ability,  stainless  private  character,  —  • 
fine  charm  of  manner,  and  devoted  his  leisure  v^ 
to  studies  in  literature  and  history.  He  was 
opposed  to  the  policy  of  the  Stamp  Act,  but 
as  Chief  Justice  he  administered  the  law 
faithfully.  Goldwin  Smith  tells  us  that  Hutch 
inson  was  "  a  man  whose  reputation  long  lay 
buried  under  patriot  vituperation,  but  who  is 
now  admitted  by  fair-minded  writers  to  have 
been  himself  a  patriot,  seeking  to  the  utmost 
of  his  power  peace  with  justice."  When  the 
stamps  arrived  in  Boston  the  building  intended 
as  a  stamp  office  was  destroyed  by  a  mob. 
Public  officials  were  hung  in  effigy  and  forced 
to  resign  their  offices.  Court  houses  and  the 
custom  house  were  sacked  and  their  records 
burned.  The  mob,  intoxicated  with  liquor, 
which  they  had  found  in  the  cellar  of  a  house 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.  27 
they  had  plundered,  proceeded  to  the  resi 
dence  of  Hutchinson,  the  finest  in  Boston,  and 
destroyed  it.  His  plate,  furniture,  pictures, 
public  documents,  and  a  valuable  library,  which 
he  had  spent  thirty  years  in  collecting,  were 
plundered  and  destroyed.  This  is  a  specimen 
of  the  way  some  of  the  people  of  Boston 
discussed  a  grave  constitutional  question,  when, 
according  to  the  highest  authorities,  they  were 
on  the  wrong  side  of  it.  It  is  true  that  reso 
lutions  were  afterward  carried  in  a  town  meet 
ing  for  suppressing  riots,  but  no  one  was  ever 
punished  for  these  outrages. 

The  principal  objection  made  by  the  colo 
nists  to  the  Stamp  Act  was  on  the  ground  that 
it  was  an  internal  tax.  They  denied  the  right 
of  Parliament  to  impose  internal  taxation, 
claiming  that  to  be  a  function  that  could  be 
exercised  only  by  the  colonial  assemblies. 
They  admitted,  however,  that  Parliament  had 
a  right  to  levy  duties  on  exports  and  imports, 
and  they  had  submitted  to  such  taxation  for 
many  years  without  complaint. 

Franklin,    in    his    examination    before    the 


28  THE  OTHER  SIDE  OF  THE 
House  of  Commons,  was  asked:  "  Did  you 
ever  hear  the  authority  of  Parliament  to  make 
laws  for  America  questioned  until  lately?  " 
and  he  replied:  "The  authority  of  Parlia 
ment  was  allowed  to  be  valid  in  all  laws  ex 
cept  such  as  should  lay  internal  taxes:  it  was 
never  disputed  in  laying  duties  to  regulate  com 
merce."  And  in  reply  to  another  question, 
he  said:  "  I  never  heard  any  objection  to  the 
right  of  laying  duties  to  regulate  commerce, 
but  a  right  to  lay  internal  taxes  was  never 
supposed  to  be  in  Parliament,  as  we  are  not 
represented  there."  Franklin  agreed  with  ex- 
President  Cleveland  that  a  duty  on  an  imported 
article  is  added  to  the  first  cost,  and  when  the 
article  is  offered  for  sale  makes  a  part  of  the 
price,  although  some  of  us  Republicans  deny 
the  soundness  of  that  proposition.  The  es 
sential  point,  however,  is  that  duties  were  re 
garded  as  taxes, -at  least,  duties  on  necessities. 
But  Franklin  differed  with  Cleveland  in  one 
particular.  When  asked  to  state  whether  in 
his  opinion  there  was  any  difference  between 
external  and  internal  taxes,  he  replied: — 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.  29 
"  I  think  the  difference  is  very  great.  An 
external  tax  is  a  duty  laid  on  commodities 
imported;  the  duty  is  added  to  the  first  cost 
and  other  charges  on  the  commodity,  and, 
when  it  is  offered  for  sale,  makes  a  part  of 
the  price.  If  the  people  do  not  like  it  at  that 
price,  they  refuse  it;  they  are  not  obliged  to 
pay  it.  But  an  internal  tax  is  forced  from 
the  people  without  their  consent,  if  not  laid  by 
their  own  representatives." 

This  would  be  so  in  case  of  an  article  not 
necessary  for  use  or  consumption,  but,  as  many 
of  the  imported  articles  were  indispensable  and 
not  produced  or  made  in  America,  Franklin's 
distinction  was  bright  but  thin.  Grenville  ridi 
culed  the  distinction  between  external  and  in 
ternal  taxes,  and  Chatham,  between  the  explo 
sions  of  his  oratory,  declared: — 

"  I  cannot  understand  the  difference  between 
external  and  internal  taxes.  They  are  the 
same  in  effect,  and  differ  only  in  name.  That 
this  Kingdom  has  the  sovereign,  the  supreme 
legislative  power  over  America  is  granted.  It 
cannot  be  denied.  Taxation  is  a  part  of  that 
sovereign  power." 


30         THE  OTHER  SIDE  OF  THE 

The  Stamp  Act  remained  in  force  for  a  year 
only,  and  was  then  repealed  in  an  effort  to 
pacify  the  colonists,  and  a  duty  laid  on  tea 
and  other  imports,  which  they  had  always 
admitted  to  be  a  valid  act  of  Parliament. 
But  the  turbulent  spirits  were  not  to  be  satisfied 
so  easily.  They  organized  an  immense  boy 
cott  against  British  goods  and  commercial  in 
tercourse  with  England,  and  appointed  vig 
ilance  committees  in  many  communities  to  see 
that  the  boycott  was  rigidly  enforced.  In  De 
cember,  1  773,  three  ships  laden  with  tea — 
private  property  of  an  innocent  corporation — 
arrived  at  Boston,  and  on  the  16th  of  that 
month — just  one  hundred  and  twenty-four 
years  ago  tonight — forty  or  fifty  men  disguised 
as  Mohawk  Indians,  under  the  direction  of 
Sam.  Adams,  John  Hancock  and  others, 
boarded  the  vessels,  posted  sentinels  to  keep  all 
agents  of  authority  at  a  distance,  and  flung 
the  whole  cargo,  consisting  of  three  hundred 
and  forty-two  chests,  into  the  sea.  The  pub 
lic  officials  did  nothing,  and  no  one  was  ever 
punished  for  this  act  of  malicious  mischief.* 

*See  letter  of  Franklin ;  note  at  end. 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.  31 
Ships  laden  with  tea  arriving  at  other  ports 
were  forced  to  return,  and  the  law  everywhere 
was  violated  with  impunity.  How  can  we, 
law-abiding  citizens,  with  any  show  of  con 
sistency,  applaud  the  Boston  Tea  Party  and 
condemn  the  high-handed  conduct  of  Martin 
Irons  and  Eugene  Debs? 

There  is  a  remarkable  fact  about  the  action 
of  American  mobs  during  the  long  period  of 
anarchy  and  riot  that  prevailed  from  1 763 
until  the  federal  government  was  organized  in 
1  789 — they  were  not  blood-thirsty.  It  is  true 
they  resorted  to  the  cruel  practice  of  carrying 
loyalists  about  on  rails  and  daubing  them  all 
over  with  tar  and  feathers.  They  would  burn 
buildings;  sack  dwellings;  confiscate  property; 
intimidate  public  officials  and  force  them  to  re 
sign;  and  pass  laws  to  compel  honest  people  to 
accept  worthless  money  for  their  goods  and 
chattels,  and  in  payment  of  just  debts;  but  it 
must  be  said  to  their  credit  that  instances  of 

extreme  torture  are  not  very  numerous. 
i 

The  correspondence  and  diaries  of  the  rev 
olutionary  era  probably  give  us  the  most  re- 


32  THE  OTHER  SIDE  OF  THE 
liable  information  as  to  the  views  and  condi 
tion  of  the  people.  In  1 774,  John  Adams 
made  a  trip  to  New  York,  and  noted  in  his 
diary: — "With  all  the  opulence  and  splendor 
of  this  city,  there  is  very  little  good  breeding 
to  be  found.  We  have  been  treated  with  an 
assiduous  respect,  but  I  have  not  seen  one  real 
gentleman,  one  well-bred  man,  since  I  came 
to  town.  At  their  entertainments  there  is  no 
conversation  that  is  agreeable;  there  is  no  mod 
esty;  no  attention  to  one  another.  They  talk 
very  loud,  very  fast,  and  all  together.  If  they 
ask  you  a  question,  before  you  can  utter  three 
words  of  your  answer,  they  will  break  out 
upon  you  again  and  talk  away."  We  should 
hardly  consider  this  courteous  language  about 
friends  who  had  treated  us  with  assiduous  re 
spect  while  on  a  visit.  I  suspect  the  impetuous 
visitor  was  not  pleased  to  find  patriotism  less 
ardent  in  New  York  than  in  Boston.  If 
Adams  had  been  entertained  by  some  of  the 
Tories,  it  is  likely  he  would  have  given  us  a 
different  picture  of  more  dainty  people. 
Again,  in  a  letter  to  his  wife,  written  in  1  776, 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.  33 
he  said: — "  There  is  too  much  corruption,  even 
in  this  infant  age  of  our  republic.  Virtue  is 
not  in  fashion.  Vice  is  not  infamous.  The 
spirit  of  venality  you  mention  is  the  most  dread 
ful  and  alarming  enemy  America  has  to  oppose. 
It  is  rapacious  and  insatiable  as  the  grave. 
This  predominant  avarice  will  ruin  America, 
if  she  is  ever  ruined."  And  then  he  adds  a 
line  that  I  hesitate  to  read — "  I  am  ashamed 
of  the  age  I  live  in.'* 

After  Washington's  dismal  retreat  from  Long 
Island  across  New  Jersey  he  wrote  to  Con 
gress,  that  "  the  inhabitants  of  this  State,  either 
from  fear  or  disaffection,  almost  to  a  man,  re 
fused  to  turn  out."  "  With  a  handful  of  men," 
he  adds,  "  compared  to  the  enemy's  force,  we 
have  been  pushed  through  the  Jerseys  without 
being  able  to  make  the  smallest  opposition,  and 
compelled  to  pass  the  Delaware.  Instead  of 
giving  any  assistance  in  repelling  the  enemy,  the 
militia  have  not  only  refused  to  obey  your  gen 
eral  summons  and  that  of  their  commanding 
officers,  but,  I  am  told,  exult  at  the  approach  of 
the  enemy  and  on  our  late  misfortunes.  I 


34  THE  OTHER  SIDE  OF  THE 
found  no  disposition  in  the  inhabitants  to  afford 
the  least  aid.  We  are  in  a  very  disaffected 
part  of  the  province,  and  between  you  and  me 
I  think  our  affairs  are  in  a  very  bad  condition; 
not  so  much  from  the  apprehension  of  General 
Howe's  army  as  from  the  defection  of  New 
York,  the  Jerseys,  and  Pennsylvania.  In 
short,  the  conduct  of  the  Jerseys  has  been  most 
infamous.  Instead  of  turning  out  to  defend 
their  country  and  affording  aid  to  our  army, 
they  are  making  their  submission  as  fast  as 
they  can.  If  the  Jerseys  had  given  us  any 
support  we  might  have  made  a  stand  at  Hack- 
insac,  and  after  that,  at  Brunswick;  but  the 
few  militia  that  were  in  arms  disbanded  them 
selves  and  left  the  poor  remains  of  our  army 
to  make  the  best  we  could  of  it." 

And  in  a  letter  written  at  Philadelphia  De 
cember  30th,  1778,  he  says: 

"  If  I  were  called  upon  to  draw  a  picture 
of  the  times  and  of  the  men  from  what  I  have 
seen,  heard,  and  in  part  know,  I  should  in  one 
word  say  that  idleness,  dissipation,  and  extrav 
agance  seem  to  have  laid  fast  hold  of  most  of 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.  35 
them;  that  speculation,  peculation,  and  an  in 
satiable  thirst  for  riches  seem  to  have  got  the 
better  of  every  other  consideration  and  almost 
of  every  order  of  men;  that  party  disputes  and 
personal  quarrels  are  the  great  business  of  the 
day;  whilst  the  momentous  concerns  of  an  em 
pire,  a  great  and  accumulating  debt,  ruined 
finances,  depreciated  money  and  want  of  credit, 
which  in  its  consequences,  is  want  of  every 
thing,  are  but  secondary  considerations  and 
postponed  from  day  to  day,  from  week  to 
week,  as  if  our  affairs  wore  the  most  promis 
ing  aspect.  *  *  *  *  Our  money  is  now 
sinking  50  per  cent,  a  day  in  this  city,  and  I 
shall  not  be  surprised  if  in  the  course  of  a  few 
months  a  total  stop  is  put  to  the  currency  of 
it;  and  yet  an  assembly,  a  concert,  a  dinner,  or 
supper,  will  not  only  take  men  off  from  acting 
in  this  business,  but  even  from  thinking  of  it; 
while  a  great  part  of  the  officers  of  our  army 
from  absolute  necessity  are  quitting  the  service, 
and  the  more  virtuous  few,  rather  than  do  this, 
are  sinking  by  sure  degrees  into  beggary  and 
want." 


36         THE  OTHER  SIDE  OF  THE 

And  Franklin  about  the  same  time  wrote  a 
letter  in  which  he  said:  "  The  extravagant 
luxury  of  our  country  in  the  midst  of  all  its 
distresses  is  to  me  amazing." 

Some  years  later  John  Marshall,  afterwards 
the  great  Chief  Justice,  in  a  letter  to  a  friend, 
said:  '  There  appears  every  day  to  be  more 
folly,  envy,  malice  and  damned  rascality  than 
there  was  the  day  before;  and  I  do  verily  begin 
to  think  that  plain,  downright  honesty  and  un- 
intriguing  integrity  will  be  kicked  out  of  doors." 
The  people  were  great  sticklers  for  what 
they  regarded  as  their  legal  rights.  Nearly 
everybody  who  could  read  studied  law,  and 
Dean  Tucker,  in  a  letter  to  Burke,  records 
the  fact  that  "in  no  country  perhaps  in  the 
world  are  there  so  many  lawsuits."  Patrick 
Henry  was  admitted  to  the  bar  in  the  fall  of 
1  760.  During  the  next  three  years  he  charged 
fees  in  eleven  hundred  and  eighty-five  cases, 
besides  assisting  his  father-in-law  to  keep  a 
hotel — "  tended  travelers  and  drew  corks  "  is 
the  way  McMaster  has  to  tell  it.  Many  of 
the  people  seemed  to  think,  as  some  people  still 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.  37 
think,  that  it  is  right  to  do  wrong  according 
to  law. 

Nor  was  the  public  life  of  the  country  at 
that  time  more  creditable.  It  was  a  common 
expression  that  many  of  the  patriots  thought 
locally  and  not  continentally,  and  this  vice  of 
thinking  on  public  questions  is  still  a  poison 
rankling  in  our  body  politic.  It  leads  men  to 
try  to  get  something  from  the  commonwealth 
instead  of  trying  to  do  something  to  promote 
the  general  welfare.  Washington  and  other 
genuine  patriots  suffered  mortal  anguish  from 
lack  of  attention  to  their  most  urgent  entreaties 
for  the  barest  necessities.  John  Adams,  from 
the  first  Continental  Congress,  wrote  to  his 
wife:  *'  Every  man  in  this  assembly  is  a 
great  man — an  orator,  a  critic,  a  statesman — 
and  therefore  every  man  upon  every  occasion 
must  show  his  oratory,  his  criticism  and  his 
political  abilities.  The  consequence  is  that 
business  is  spun  out  to  an  immeasurable  length." 
This  sounds  like  a  current  comment  on  the 
proceedings  of  our  Fifty-fifth  Congress.  And 
in  another  place,  speaking  of  the  proceedings 


38  THE  OTHER  SIDE  OF  THE 
of  the  first  Continental  Congress,  he  says:  "  It 
is  almost  impossible  to  move  anything  but  you 
instantly  see  private  friendships  and  enmities, 
and  provincial  views  and  prejudices,  intermin 
gle  in  the  consultation."  Indeed,  the  people 
of  the  revolutionary  era  talked  more  disre 
spectfully  of  their  representative  assemblies 
than  we  do  of  ours. 

Gouverneur  Morris  was  no  doubt  one  of  the 
shrewdest  observers  of  current  events  in  his 
day,  and  the  purity  of  the  patriotism  of  John 
Jay  entitled  him  to  stand  by  the  side  of  Wash 
ington.  One  day,  in  a  conversation,  thirty 
years  after  the  second  Continental  Congress 
had  passed  away,  Morris  exclaimed:  "Jay, 
what  a  set  of  scoundrels  we  had  in  that  Second 
Congress!  "  And  Jay,  as  he  knocked  the 
ashes  from  his  pipe,  replied,  "  Yes,  we  had." 
I  have  omitted  an  adjective  used  by  Morris. 

After  such  an  account  of  the  Continental 
Congress  you  will  not  be  surprised  to  hear  that 
even  in  the  army  some  of  the  unlovely  traits  of 
human  nature  discovered  themselves.  In  the 
summer  of  1  777,  on  a  visit  to  the  army,  Adams 


wfr*v 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.  39 
wrote  to  his  wife:  "  I  am  wearied  to  death 
with  the  wrangles  between  military  officers, 
high  and  low.  They  quarrel  like  cats  and 
dogs.  They  worry  one  another  like  mastiffs, 
scrambling  for  rank  and  pay  like  apes  for  nuts." 
But  we  must  not  forget  the  exceptions.  In 
all  wars  there  are  acts  of  heroic  devotion  on 
both  sides,  and  perhaps  it  is  but  fair  to  judge 
the  conduct  of  a  soldier  without  regard  to  the 
merits  of  the  cause  for  which  he  fights.  No 
doubt  Jackson,  by  shooting  Ellsworth,  showed 
as  much  courage  as  Nathan  Hale,  standing  in 
the  shadow  of  the  gibbet  and  lamenting  that 
he  had  but  one  young  life  to  give  to  his  coun 
try.  We  may  cheer  the  skill  and  bravery  of 
Arnold  at  Saratoga,  winning  a  victory  that 
turned  the  tide  of  war,  without  passing  judg 
ment  on  his  conduct  before  or  after.  And  so 
we  need  abate  no  jot  of  admiration  for  the 
heroism  of  the  militia  assembled  on  Bunker 
Hill  when  we  recall  the  fact  that  their  leaders 
made  a  dispute  about  the  method  of  raising 
a  small  amount  of  revenue  a  pretext  for  rend 
ing  an  empire,  which,  if  united,  might  civilize 


40  THE  OTHER  SIDE  OF  THE 
and  wisely  govern  the  fairest  portions  of  the  globe. 
I  will  mention  one  more  fact  to  throw  a  light 
on  the  public  spirit  of  the  age.  Near  the  close 
of  1 779,  Congress,  trying  to  dispel  the  fear 
that  the  continental  currency  would  not  be  re 
deemed,  passed  a  resolution  declaring:  "A 
bankrupt,  faithless  republic  would  be  a  novelty 
in  the  political  world.  The  pride,  of  America 
revolts  from  the  idea;  her  citizens  know  for 
what  purpose  these  emissions  were  made,  and 
have  repeatedly  pledged  their  faith  for  the 
redemption  of  them."  The  rest  of  the  resolu 
tion  is  too  coarse  for  quotation  even  for  the  sake 
of  its  emphasis.  In  a  little  more  than  three 
months  from  the  passage  of  that  resolution  a 
bill  was  passed  to  refund  the  continental  cur 
rency  by  issuing  one  dollar  of  new  paper  money 
for  forty  dollars  of  the  old,  and  the  new  issue 
soon  became  as  worthless  as  the  former  edition. 
Indeed,  the  patriots  repudiated  obligations  to 
the  amount  of  two  hundred  million  dollars,  and 
did  it  so  effectually  that  we  still  use  the  ex 
pression  "  not  worth  a  continental  as  a  syn 
onym  of  worthlessness. 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.  41 
These  are  some  of  the  items  of  historical 
information  I  had  in  mind  when  remarking  to 
Mr.  Atkinson  last  September  that  the  Declara 
tion  of  Independence  was  an  unjustifiable  act. 
Whether  the  statement  is  correct  or  not,  it  is 
the  conclusion  that  profound  historians  have 
reached  by  studying  the  whole  controversy 
carefully  after  the  lapse  of  a  century.  Let  me 
refer  to  the  opinions  of  one  or  two  who  cannot 
be  suspected  of  admiring  the  corrupt  parlia 
ments,  foolish  ministries,  and  headstrong  stu 
pidity  of  George  III. 

Professor  Sumner,  to  whose  work  I  have 
referred,  tells  us  that  the  literature  of  the 
revolutionary  period  is  indescribably  dull.  "  It 
is  astonishing,"  he  says,  *'  how  far  the  writers 
kept  from  the  facts  and  evidence.  This  is  so 
much  the  case,  that  it  is  often  impossible  to 
learn  what  was  really  the  matter."  He  adds 
that  "  the  colonists  first  objected  to  internal 
taxes,  but  consented  to  import  duties.  Then 
they  distinguished  between  import  duties  to  reg 
ulate  commerce  and  import  duties  for  revenue. 
They  seem  to  have  changed  their  position  and 


42         THE  OTHER  SIDE  OF  THE 

to  be  consistent  in  one  thing  only,  to  pay  no 
taxes  and  to  rebel."  The  Americans,  he  tells 
us,  admitted  the  theory  by  virtue  of  which  they 
were  oppressed,  while  fighting  the  application  of 
it,  and  thinks  "  this  is  the  reason  why  they  could 
never  make  any  rational  theory  of  their  opposi 
tion.  They  claimed  the  rights  of  free-born 
Englishmen  and  the  guarantees  of  the  English 
constitution,  but  they  were  forced  to  find  some 
means  of  defining  which  acts  of  parliament  they 
would  accept  and  which  not."  After  patiently 
examining  their  pamphlets  and  discussions, 
Sumner  concludes: — "The  incidents  of  the 
trouble  offer  occasion  at  every  step  for  re 
serve  in  approving  the  proceedings  of  the 
colonists." 

Bentham,  although  himself  a  revolutionist  of 
a  very  destructive  type,  opposed  the  movement 
of  the  colonists,  because  of  the  badness  of  the 
arguments  they  used,  saying  that  **  the  whole 
of  their  case  was  founded  on  the  assumption 
of  natural  rights,  claimed  without  the  slightest 
evidence  of  their  existence  and  supported  by 
vague  and  declamatory  generalities."  This  opin- 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.  43 
ion  of  Bentham  was  revived  and  made  famous 
by  Rufus  Choate  in  1 85  6,  when,  in  a  letter 
to  the  Whigs  of  Maine,  he  warned  them  against 
"  the  glittering  and  sounding  generalities  of  nat 
ural  right  which  make  up  the  Declaration  of 
Independence." 

Some  years  ago  Mr.  Lecky  published  a  his 
tory  of  England  in  the  eighteenth  century,  and 
filled  more  than  a  volume  with  an  account  of 
the  American  Revolution.  Lecky  is  an  Irish 
man,  and  his  work  is  a  masterpiece.  I  refer 
to  it  especially,  because  it  enjoys  the  endorse 
ment  of  the  New  York  Sun,  by  far  the  ablest 
and  most  aggressive  advocate  of  American  in 
terests  against  British  pretensions.  In  its  re 
view  of  Mr.  Lecky's  work,  the  Sun  said: — 

"  On  every  ground  which  should  render  a 
history  of  eighteenth-century  England  precious 
to  thinking  men,  Mr.  Lecky's  work  may  be 
commended.  The  materials  accumulated  in 
these  volumes  attest  an  industry  more  strenuous 
and  comprehensive  than  that  exhibited  by 
Froude  or  by  Macaulay.  But  it  is  his  su 
preme  merit  that  he  leaves  on  the  reader's  mind 


44         THE  OTHER  SIDE  OF  THE 
a    conviction    that    he    not    only    possesses    the 
acuteness  which  can  discern  the  truth,  but  the 
unflinching  purpose  of  truth-telling." 

Professor  Fiske  of  Harvard,  who  has  lec 
tured  and  written  considerably  on  the  history 
of  the  Revolution,  admits  that  Mr.  Lecky  is 
'*  eminently  fair  and  candid."  Fiske  is  the 
author  of  an  admirable  history  of  the  military 
movements  of  the  Revolution:  but  his  mind  is 
so  completely  obsessed  by  philosophy  that  in 
dealing  with  other  aspects  of  the  Revolution 
he  innocently  selects,  collates  and  colors  facts 
so  as  to  make  them  agree  with  the  theory  of 
his  prejudices. 

The  opinion  of  such  an  authority  as  Lecky 
on  our  revolutionary  movement  must  be  worthy 
of  thoughtful  attention.  And  his  opinion  is 
this:  *'  Any  nation  might  be  proud  of  the 
shrewd,  brave,  prosperous  and  highly  intelligent 
yeomen  who  flocked  to  the  American  camp; 
but  they  were  very  different  men  from  those 
who  defended  the  walls  of  Leyden,  or  immor 
talized  the  field  of  Bannockburn.  Few  of  the 
great  pages  of  history  are  less  marked  by  the 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.  45 
stamp  of  heroism  than  the  American  Revolu 
tion;  and  perhaps  the  most  formidable  of  the 
difficulties  which  Washington  had  to  encounter 
were  in  his  own  camp." 

And  he  concludes  his  survey  of  the  move 
ment  with  these  words:  "  In  truth  the  Amer 
ican  people,  though  in  general  unbounded  be 
lievers  in  progress,  are  accustomed,  through  a 
kind  of  curious  modesty,  to  do  themselves  a 
great  injustice  by  the  extravagant  manner  in 
which  they  idealize  their  past.  It  has  almost 
become  a  commonplace  that  the  great  nation 
which  in  our  own  day  has  shown  such  an  ad 
mirable  combination  of  courage,  devotion,  and 
humanity  in  its  gigantic  civil  war,  and  which 
since  that  time  has  so  signally  falsified  the  pre 
diction  of  its  enemies,  and  put  to  shame  all 
the  nations  of  Europe  by  its  unparalleled  ef 
forts  in  paying  off  its  national  debt,  is  of  a  far 
lower  moral  type  than  its  ancestors  at  the  time 
of  the  War  of  Independence.  This  belief 
appears  to  me  essentially  false.  The  nobility 
and  beauty  of  the  character  of  Washington 
can,  indeed,  hardly  be  surpassed;  several  of 


46  THE  OTHER  SIDE  OF  THE 
the  other  leaders  of  the  Revolution  were  men 
of  ability  and  public  spirit,  and  few  armies 
have  ever  shown  a  nobler  self-devotion  than 
that  which  remained  with  Washington  through 
the  dreary  winter  at  Valley  Forge.  But  the 
army  that  bore  those  sufferings  was  a  very 
small  one,  and  the  general  aspect  of  the  Amer 
ican  people  during  the  contest  was  far  from 
heroic  or  sublime.  The  future  destinies  and 
greatness  of  the  English  race  must  necessarily 
rest  mainly  with  the  mighty  nation  which  has 
arisen  beyond  the  Atlantic,  and  that  nation 
may  well  afford  to  admit  that  its  attitude  dur 
ing  the  brief  period  of  its  enmity  to  England 
has  been  very  unduly  extolled.  At  the  same 
time,  the  historian  of  that  period  would  do  the 
Americans  a  great  injustice  if  he  judged  them 
only  by  the  revolutionary  party,  and  failed  to 
recognize  how  large  a  proportion  of  their  best 
men  had  no  sympathy  with  the  movement." 
My  friend,  Mr.  Atkinson,  will  smile  when  I 
remind  him  that  the  Episcopal  clergy  of  the 
revolutionary  era  were  Tories  almost  to  a  man. 
No  candid  historian  contends  in  our  day 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.  47 
that  the  government  of  England  had  done  any 
thing  prior  to  the  commencement  of  the  revolu 
tionary  movement  that  would  have  justified  the 
••'Declaration  of  Independence.  The  amount  of 
taxes  required  of  the  colonies  by  Parliament 
was  moderate;  the  money  was  needed  for  a 
proper  purpose,  and  it  seems  there  was  no 
other  way  to  obtain  it.  But  the  colonists  were 
logical  people,  and  they  argued  that  *'  the 
power  to  tax  involves  the  power  to  destroy," 
as  Marshall  afterwards  decided  in  a  famous 
case.  Those  who  rebelled  in  good  faith  did 
so  because  they  feared  that  the  power  of  Par 
liament  to  tax  them  moderately  to  raise  money 
for  their  own  defense  might  be  used  some  time 
in  the  future  for  a  less  worthy  purpose,  and 
then  they  would  all  be  "  slaves."  Their  argu 
ment  led  to  anarchy. 

As  we  review  the  conflict  we  are  apt  to 
forget  that  the  Americans  were  not  alone  in 
their  efforts  to  throw  off  the  restraints  of  British 
law  during  the  twenty  years  preceding  the 
surrender  at  Yorktown.  Wilkes,  Junius  and 
Lord  George  Gordon  surpassed  the  efforts  of 


48  THE  OTHER  SIDE  OF  THE 
Patrick  Henry,  Sam.  Adams  and  Crispus  At- 
tucks  to  make  the  reign  of  George  III  a  failure. 
Mobs  surged  about  the  streets  of  London  as 
they  did  in  Boston,  defying  the  law,  destroying 
property,  and  disturbing  the  public  peace.  I 
have  described  how  the  home  of  Hutchinson, 
Chief  Justice  of  Massachusetts,  was  wrecked 
and  pillaged.  The  home  of  Mansfield,  Chief 
Justice  of  England,  was  wrecked  in  the  same 
manner  and  burned  to  the  ground.  Both  mobs 
claimed  to  act  "  on  principle,"  and  there  is 
a  curious  likeness  in  the  details  of  these  two 
acts  of  violence.  It  was  an  age  of  insurrection, 
with  no  political  genius  able  or  in  a  position 
to  direct  the  storm.  During  the  Wilkes  riots 
in  1  768  the  civil  power  in  England  was  re 
duced  to  extreme  weakness.  Lecky  tells  us 
**  there  were  great  fears  that  all  the  bulwarks 
of  order  would  yield  to  the  strain,"  and  Frank 
lin,  then  in  London,  said  that  if  Wilkes  had 
possessed  a  good  character  and  the  King  a  bad 
one,  Wilkes  would  have  driven  George  III 
from  the  throne.  In  1  780,  during  the  Gordon 
riots,  chaos  came  again  to  London,  and  all 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.  49 
England  was  threatened  with  anarchy.  The 
time  was  out  of  joint  on  both  continents,  and 
George  III  was  not  born  to  set  it  right. 

We  may  be  sure  there  was  something  more 
serious  than  glory  in  all  this  tumult  that  em 
bittered  the  most  beneficent  of  civilizing  races. 
Whoever  examines  the  dispute  with  impartial 
care,  will  probably  perceive  that  the  time  had 
come  for  a  new  adjustment  of  the  constitutional 
relations  of  the  several  parts  of  the  British 
Empire;  but  the  temper  of  George  III,  and  the 
disorderly  elements  active  both  in  England  and 
America  were  unfavorable  to  rational  treat 
ment  of  the  great  problem.  In  the  cold  light 
of  truth  it  now  seems  quite  clear  that  the  Amer 
icans  took  up  arms  before  they  were  in  any 
real  danger  of  oppression,  and  that  George  III 
was  persuaded  to  concede  more  than  all  their 
reasonable  demands,  but  yielded  too  late  to 
save  the  integrity  of  the  empire. 

I  do  not  intend  to  enter  the  wide  field 
of  speculative  controversy  concerning  the  move 
ment  in  which  the  Declaration  of  Independence 
was  a  passionate  outcry.  But  there  is  a 


50  THE  OTHER  SIDE  OF  THE 
theory  or  defense  of  that  movement  appearing 
in  some  of  our  histories  which  needs  a  moment's 
attention. ~""We  are  told  that  George  III  was  a 
tyrant,  seeking  to  establish  despotism,  and  that 
Washington  rescued  and  preserved  Anglo- 
Saxon  liberty,  not  only  in  America,  but  wher 
ever  it  existed  in  the  British  dominions.  I  am 
not  willing  to  endorse  this  extravagant  com 
pliment  to  the  King.  We  may  admit  that  he 
was  a  respectable  man  in  private  life,  and  that 
barring  briberyMie  acted  on  principle  as  he  un 
derstood  it  in  his  public  career.  Historians 
seem  to  agree  that  he  was  dull,  badly  educated, 
stubborn  and  affectionate.  He  had  some  prince 
ly  accomplishments;  but  he  was  far  from  being 
a  great  man.  ""Certainly  he  was  not  in  the  class 
of  conquerors,  nor  able  to  commit  what  Mc- 
Intosh  calls  a  splendid  crime.'*?  His  mother  was 
always  croaking  in  his  ears,  "  George,  be  a 
king."  His  spirit  was  willing,  but  some  of 
his  faculties  were  very  weak.  His  sight  and 
hearing  failed,  and  his  mind  gave  way  under 
the  strain.  Thackeray,  dropping  his  cynical 
style  for  a  moment,  gives  us  a  touching  account 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.  51 
of  the  King's  last  years.  ~-  All  history,  he  tells 
us,  presents  no  sadder  figure.  It  is  too  terrible 
for  tears.  Driven  off  his  throne;  buffeted  by 
rude  hands;  his  children  in  revolt,  his  ending 
was  pitiful  and  awful  as  that  of  Lear.  One 
day  while  he  was  in  a  lucid  moment  the  Queen 
entered  his  room,  and  found  him  singing  and 
playing  on  a  musical  instrument.  When  he  had 
finished  he  knelt  and  prayed  for  her,  for  his 
family  and  the  nation,  and  last  for  himself;  and 
then  tears  began  to  flow  down  his  cheeks  and 
his  reason  fled  again.  Caesar,  Henry  VIII 
and  Napoleon  tried  to  establish  a  dynasty  of 
despots  and  failed,  and  as  we  glance  at  the 
figure  of  George  III  and  recall  the  traits  of  his 
character  we  see  that  Anglo-Saxon  civilization 
or  liberty  was  in  no  danger  of  permanent  injury 
from  the  last  King  of  England  who  tried  to 
reign. 

Here  I  will  close  this  effort  to  justify  my 
remark  at  the  beginning,  and  will  endeavor 
in  a  few  words  to  present  a  broader  view  of 
the  true  relations  between  England  and  Amer 
ica.  We  have,  no  doubt,  many  just  causes 


52  THE  OTHER  SIDE  OF  THE 
of  complaint  against  some  of  the  descendants 
of  the  twenty  thousand  Norman  thieves  who 
founded  the  House  of  Lords,  as  Emerson  re 
minds  us,  but  I  do  not  recall  a  single  serious 
grievance  that  we  can  fairly  charge^  against 
the  masses  of  the  people  of  the  British  Islands. 
They  have  never  until  recently  had  a  potent 
voice  to  dictate  the  policy  of  their  government. 
They  did  not  enact  the  trade  and  navigation 
laws,  which  were  the  real  grievances  of  the 
thirteen  colonies.  Not  one  of  the  maledic 
tions  in  the  Declaration  of  Independence  was 
spoken  against  them.  They  did  not  hire  Hes 
sians  and  savages  to  wage  war  against  our 
ancestors.  They  did  not  impress  our  sailors 
on  the  sea  nor  burn  our  capitol  at  Washington. 
They  did  not  applaud  Gladstone's  exultant 
outcry  in  1862  that  Jefferson  Davis  had 
created  a  nation,  nor  approve  the  sailing  of 
the  Alabama  to  sweep  our  commerce  from  the 
sea.  But  they  have  erected  a  statue  of  Lincoln 
in  Edinburgh  and  a  bust  of  Longfellow  in 
Poet's  Corner.  Whoever  converses  with  the 
people  of  England  who  live  .outside  of  the 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.  53 
influence  of  the  snobs — English  and  American 
— who  gather  in  London  during  the  season, 
will  hear  many  good  wishes  for  the  success 
of  our  momentous  experiment  in  popular  gov 
ernment,  and  not  one  word  of  unjust  detrac 
tion.  I  was  once  startled  and  pleased  to  hear 
a  long  rumble  of  applause  by  a  vast  audience 
in  Spurgeon's  tabernacle  follow  a  kindly  ref 
erence  by  the  famous  preacher  to  the  great 
republic  beyond  the  sea. 

I  have  not  overlooked  the  portly  argument 
of  the  late  Douglass  Campbell,  striving  to 
show  that  we  inherited  our  political  blessings 
not  from  England  but  from  Holland;  but  I 
believe  that  a  more  critical  reading  of  history 
would  show  that  the  vital  principles  of  our  polit 
ical  fabric  are  of  British  origin  or  British  de 
velopment.  After  reviewing  the  long  struggle 
for  liberty  regulated  by  law  extending  from 
the  battle  of  Hastings  to  the  Reform  Bill,  and 
still  remembering  the  origin  of  the  House  of 
Lords,  Emerson  said  of  England:  "  It  is  a 
land  of  patriots,  martyrs,  sages  and  bards,  and 
if  the  ocean  out  of  which  it  emerged  should 


54  THE  OTHER  SIDE  OF  THE 
wash  it  away  it  would  be  remembered  as  an 
island  famous  for  immortal  laws,  for  the  an 
nouncements  of  original  right  that  make  the 
stone  tables  of  liberty."  Some  of  those  tables 
were  brought  to  America  by  the  Mayflower, 
and  some  of  those  laws  have  been  re-enacted 
here  by  the  lineal  descendants  of  the  patriots 
of  the  British  Islands. 

^i he  Declaration  of  Independence  and  the 
shock  of  civil  war  disturbed  the  harmony,  but 
failed  to  destroy  the  unity,  of  the  races  that 
speak  English.  Washington  still  followed  in 
the  footsteps  of  Hampden;  Franklin  contin 
ued  the  unfinished  work  of  Bacon;  Marshall 
inherited  the  synthetic  intellect  of  Mansfield; 
Webster  proclaimed  the  grandeur  of  the  Union 
in  the  imperial  voice  of  Chatham,  and  Sumner 
came  to  plead  passionately  for  rational  liberty 
when  Burke  went  silent.  We  find  the  stern 
and  sturdy  traits  of  Cromwell  revived  in  our 
unconquerable  Grant.  The  daring  spirit  of 
Drake  or  Nelson  seemed  to  live  again  when 
Farragut  was  lashed  to  the  mast;  and  the 
English  race  has  produced  one  character  on 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.  55 
each  side  of  the  Atlantic  too  sublime  to  be 
compared  or  classified — the  Voice  we  call 
Shakespeare,  and  the  inscrutable  Martyr  who 
gave  freedom  to  the  slave. 


56         THE  OTHER  SIDE  OF  THE 


NOTE. 

While  the  foregoing  pages  were  in  press  my  attention 
was  called  to  a  letter  relating  to  the  destruction  of  the 
tea,  written  in  London  by  Franklin  to  Saml.  Adams, 
John  Hancock  and  others,  dated  February  2nd,  1774. 
At  that  time  Franklin  was  agent  for  Massachusetts.  The 
letter  is  as  follows: 

London,  Feb.   2,   1774. 
GENTLEMEN, 

I  received  the  Honour  of  your  Letter  dated  Deer. 
21,  containing  a  distinct  Account  of  the  Proceedings  at 
Boston  relative  to  the  Tea  imported  there,  and  of  the 
Circumstances  that  occasioned  its  Destruction.  I  com 
municated  the  same  to  Lord  Dartmouth,  with  some 
other  Advices  of  the  same  Import.  It  is  yet  unknown 
what  Measures  will  be  taken  here  on  the  Occasion;  but 
the  Clamour  against  the  Proceeding  is  high  and  general. 
I  am  truly  concern'd,  as  I  believe  all  considerate  Men 
are  with  you,  that  there  should  seem  to  any  a  Necessity 
for  carrying  Matters  to  such  Extremity,  as,  in  a  Dis 
pute  about  Publick  Rights,  to  destroy  private  Property; 
This  (notwithstanding  the  Blame  justly  due  to  those 
who  obstructed  the  Return  of  the  Tea)  it  is  impossible 
to  justify  with  People  so  prejudiced  in  favour  of  the 
Power  of  Parliament  to  tax  America,  as  most  are  in 
this  Country. — As  the  India  Company  however  are  not 
our  Adversaries,  and  the  offensive  Measure  of  sending 
their  Teas  did  not  take  its  Rise  with  them,  but  was  an 
Expedient  of  the  Ministry  to  serve  them  and  yet  avoid 
a  Repeal  of  the  old  Act,  I  cannot  but  wish  &  hope  that 
before  any  compulsive  Measures  are  thought  of  here, 
our  General  Court  will  have  shewn  a  Disposition  to 
repair  the  Damage  and  make  Compensation  to  the  Com 
pany.  This  all  our  Friends  here  wish  with  me;  and 
that  if  War  is  finally  to  be  made  upon  us,  which  some 
threaten,  an  Act  of  violent  Injustice  on  our  part,  un- 
rectified,  may  not  give  a  colourable  Pretence  for  it. 
A  speedy  Reparation  will  immediately  set  us  right  in 
the  Opinion  of  all  Europe.  And  tho'  the  Mischief  was 
the  Act  of  Persons  unknown,  yet  as  probably  they  can 
not  be  found  or  brought  to  answer  for  it,  there  seems 
to  be  some  reasonable  Claim  on  the  Society  at  large  in 
which  it  happened.  Making  voluntarily  such  Repara 
tion  can  be  no  Dishonour  to  us  or  Prejudice  to  our 
Claim  of  Rights,  since  Parliament  here  has  frequently 
considered  in  the  same  Light  similar  Cases;  and  only  a 
few  Years  since,  when  a  valuable  Saw-mill,  which  had 
been  erected  at  a  great  Expense  was  violently  destroyed 


DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE.    57 

by  a  Number  of  Persons  supposed  to  be  Sawyers,  but 
unknown,  a  Grant  was  made  out  of  the  Publick  Treasury 
of  Two  Thousand  Pounds  to  the  Owner  as  a  Compen 
sation. — I  hope  m  thus  freely  (and  perhaps  too  forward- 
ly)  expressing  my  Sentiments  &  Wishes,  I  shall  not 
give  Offence  to  any.  I  am  sure  I  mean  well:  being 
ever  with  sincere  Affection  to  my  native  Country,  and 
great  Respect  to  the  Assembly  and  yourselves, 
Gentlemen, 

Your   most   obedient 

and   most   humble    Servant, 

B.    Franklin, 
ble 

Hon         Thomas    Gushing   ) 
Saml.    Adams          I 
John    Hancock        (          Esquires 
William    Phillips    ) 

This   letter  is   said   to  be   among  the   Adams  papers   in 
the    New    York    Public    Library. 

F.  B. 


RETURN     CIRCULATION  DEPARTMENT 

TO—  ^      202  Main  Library 

LOAN  PERIOD  1 
HOME  USE 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

ALL  BOOKS  MAY  BE  RECALLED  AFTER  7  DAYS 

1  -month  loans  may  be  renewed  by  calling  642-3405 

6-month  loans  may  be  recharged  by  bringing  books  to  Circulation  Desk 

Renewals  and  recharges  may  be  made  4  days  prior  to  due  date 

DUE  AS  STAMPED  BELOW 


1981 


It 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA,  BERKELE 
FORM  NO.  DD6,  60m,  12/80        BERKELEY,  CA  94720 


